


Seasons (Dean)

by leonidaslion



Series: Seasons [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Drama, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-16
Updated: 2011-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-14 19:32:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at Dean seen through the prism of the changing seasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seasons (Dean)

  
**Spring**   


Dean barely remembers his life Before, but he thinks that spring used to be his least favorite time of year. He catches snapshots of his past sometimes, caught in the haze between dreams and waking. Remembers grey days, and rain pouring down the window, turning the world outside into an aquarium. The earth is mud, and even the bright flash of budding tulips looks pale, washed out.

Daddy has no time for him: the rush of spring fever brings more than the usual number of hotrods and motorcycles into the garage, a flood of metal that leaves Dean sitting by himself in a corner, face smeared with grease and hands rolling toy Firebirds and Mustangs across the concrete. Mommy is distracted by things that mean nothing to him, sitting up late nights at the kitchen table with papers piled high, and when she and Daddy think he’s asleep, Dean can hear them arguing, tossing back and forth words like “mortgage” and “debt” and “audit”.

Spring is an endless wash of cloud and dirt, the oversweet scent of the flowers his mother brings into the house, and the sense that summer will never come. It is a sinking depression as the hungry earth swallows the last snow of winter. It is the howling wind around the eaves at night that sounds like something huge and ravenous, coming to devour him.

But then Mommy gets sick, and Daddy has to drive her to the hospital in the middle of the night, and everything changes. Because Mommy is _not_ sick, Daddy explains to him as he sits in a plastic chair in the waiting room, swinging his legs above the floor. Mommy is PREGNANT, and Daddy has explained this to Dean before, but he never really understands what it means until he’s standing next to Mommy’s bed and peering up at this small, squalling thing that Mommy and Daddy assure him isn’t a monster, but his brother. Sammy.

And Dean can’t bring himself to hate spring anymore, despite the rain, and mud, and the grey, grey world.

Spring is the gift-giver, the life-bringer. Spring carried this tiny, ugly bundle into his life and deposited it in his arms, and Dean thinks that it’s the best present he’s ever received, even if it wasn’t his birthday.

  
**Summer**   


Dean always greets the summer the same way, with a whoop and a great big smack on the lips. Most of his life is wrapped up in those four months, and whenever he sits nursing a beer, it’s always the place his mind wanders back to.

Summer is the blurred fan of heat across the horizon, light winking on chrome and glass and the open road. It is the country spread out before them, and a gun in his hands, and his father’s laugh.

During the summer, he slips free of the shackles of books and bells and all the other bullshit the government insists he submit to. Dad packs them up in the Impala and drives from town to town, from job to job, and it’s like a never-ending carnival of gunpowder and salt. The days are long and his shirt sticks to his back and sweat runs down his neck in heavy streams. When they travel, he rolls the window down and hangs his head out like a dog and lets the air shove into his lungs.

Summer tastes like fresh-cut grass and laundered motel sheets and blood. It tastes like freedom.

At night Dad presses a gun into his hands, and tells Dean to watch his back. Sammy’s standing next to Dean with a gun of his own, and Dean knows that he never has to ask the same thing of his brother because Sammy will always have his back, will always be there to save his ass if Dean gets too excited and stupid to notice the ghoul creeping up behind him. At night Dean _hunts_ and sometimes he pursues when he should have fallen back and there is pain and blood but he doesn’t mind—can’t mind when he feels so awake in his own skin. When Dad’s clamping a hand down on his shoulder and telling him, _Good job, son_ , and Dean can’t imagine that anything could be better than this.

During the day, Dad is out researching, or tracking down leads, and he and Sam can cut loose for a while. There are lakes for swimming and parks for soccer and baseball—training, even if Sammy thinks they’re only goofing around. Most importantly, there are girls with cutoff shorts and blinding smiles and suntan lotion oiling their smooth limbs. And then there are places, dark and hot and secret, where his breath mingles with hers and it feels like his skin is topping out at two hundred degrees. He can’t seem to get enough air in his lungs and he can taste the lotion on her, like coconut.

Summer is the golden glow that hangs over his life. It is the place he always finds himself when he looks, where he grounds himself when the world feels like it’s coming apart at the seams. Summer, the dog days of his life, and with the sun high overhead and the Impala purring around him, pounding the pavement, putting miles behind them, he knows that it will never end.

  
**Autumn**   


Dean regards the coming of autumn the same way he would a rabid dog, or a pistol that refuses to do anything but misfire. Autumn has bent him over and fucked him nine ways from Sunday, and it’s done it more than once.

The first time it happens with fire. There’s soot and heat and the sound of screaming—his father’s, she never makes a sound. Dad’s shoving Sammy into his arms, almost too heavy to hold, and he’s yelling at Dean to take his brother outside, now, Dean, go. Then Dean’s running, clutching Sammy against his chest. He’s running down the stairs and out the front door and heat is licking the back of his neck and he can’t help it, like Lot’s wife he stops and looks back. The nursery windows are red; they’re burning. Something hard lodges in his throat and he knows it’s happening, he’s being turned to salt, and then he’s being lifted and carried away, the way he carried Sammy. But in a way Dean’s still standing there, looking up at the nursery windows. In a way he’s been left standing there all his life.

The second time it happens with a piece of paper. Just one simple page— _congratulations, welcome_ —and that’s the only thing that Sam ever shows them, although Dean knows full well that the bastards sent more. Part of him wants to slap his brother on the back and take him out and buy him a few rounds, but most of him just wants to _go_ a few rounds, so he figures it’s safer to say nothing. Dad says it all for him, anyway. And then Sam’s shoving his things into a bag and he’s calling a cab and he’s storming out of the house and the door’s slamming shut behind him and he’s gone.

The third time it happens in silence. Dad sends him in one direction and takes off in another and Dean waits for three weeks before he understands what’s happened, that autumn’s fucked him over _again_ , and he really should have seen it coming this time. He drinks steadily for four days before sobering up and pointing the Impala toward California. He never lets himself think about what he’s doing.

Autumn is the dying season, everyone knows that. Hell, _Dean_ knows that, knows it intimately. But autumn is also the losing season, when nothing makes sense anymore and everything that he’s ever known is suddenly gone.

So lately, when he smells autumn coming, when he tastes ash and alcohol in his mouth, Dean hunkers down and plants his feet. And prays to hell that he isn’t going to get knocked down again because he doesn’t know how many more times he can pick himself back up.

  
**Winter**   


Dean slides from autumn into winter with a sigh of relief and a gradual loosening of his shoulders. Time flows differently when the sunlight thins, and the world becomes ephemeral. In the lazy slip of night into day and then back again, life looses its urgency.

Winter is filled with late mornings: snow feathering the air and nowhere to go but back to sleep. It’s bordered by long, cold nights and a sky so clear that the stars might cut him if he stretches too high. Defined by snowballs and white obstacle courses and skidding across the frozen surface of a lake to collapse in a pile with his father, and the sound of Sammy’s laughter as they try to disentangle themselves.

Dean’s spent his life freezing into stillness with the rest of the world. There never seems to be a reason when they hole up for the winter, even though Dad has a million and one excuses: weather’s crap, salt on the roads’ll damage the Impala, he and Sammy have to go to school. But Dad’s driven through hurricanes and past tornadoes and never blinked. He takes care of the Impala like he’s married to her, and nothing is ever going to get a chance to eat into her sleek sides. And school’s never stopped John Winchester from picking up stakes and moving during the spring or autumn, so Dean knows that’s a load of bull too.

He thinks it has something to do with the way his father sleeps all the time during the winter. With the way he spends more time with them. With the way he smiles sometimes, just for the hell of it.

Winter, Dean has learned from his father, is a time for recharging. And while he can’t quite bring himself to a complete standstill now that Dad’s gone, Dean always finds himself slowing to a languid stroll. His body is heavier, sluggish. He lets Sam beat him while sparring and then ignores the ribbing he takes afterwards. He makes Sam drink hot chocolate with him and doesn’t tell his brother that he laced both their cups with Jim Beam. And in the morning, when he wakes Sam with a bucketful of snow, the ensuing mayhem is as close to peace as Dean thinks he’ll ever get.


End file.
